


Hardwon Surefoot - Unintentional Agony Aunt

by guineamania



Series: Band of Babysitters [1]
Category: Not Another D&D Podcast (Podcast)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Modern Era, Set in London, barfight, musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 12:53:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21161969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guineamania/pseuds/guineamania
Summary: Hardwon leaves his home in the North with grand dreams of finding himself in London. Those dreams end with him sat in a dive bar, meeting a woman with an assistance possum, getting into a bar fight to defend the honour of said possum, and agreeing to go on a hunt for some lost teens in South KensingtonAll in a days work … he thinks?





	Hardwon Surefoot - Unintentional Agony Aunt

**Author's Note:**

> So this happened …   
Basically I want more NADDPOD fanfics even if it means I have to do it myself. This is going to be a one-shot series either taking scenes from the podcast into a modern day London or just fun found family bits. If there are certain scenes you want me to try and fumble my way through then let me know in the comments or if you want to chat about NADDPOD let me know in the comments or follow guineamania on Tumblr!  
It's set in the UK because I am and I want Hardwon to be from rough and tumble industrial Yorkshire and no one can stop me!

Hardwon Surefoot was not sure how he got himself into this situation. He was new to the big city and immediately in trouble. He came to London to escape the closed minded attitude of Normanton and experience a place where people didn’t immediately know that you were the raggedy orphan who never really fit in. In hindsight maybe moving across the country to the most expensive city in the country with no house, no job, no friends wasn’t his best plan but he believed he was good enough to walk in anywhere a get a job. And so now here he was sat in a dive bar nursing two pints, mourning the fact they were two for one but he had no one to share them with. “Can, can I. Oh god. A tomato juice please fine ma’am,” a twiggy twenty something year old slid onto the bar stool, far too close to Hardwon, and seemed to be visibly shaking and close to sobbing. “Bad day sir?” the new arrival asked in a piercingly annoying voice, he was clearly posh and was even more out of place in this dump than the working class, six foot six, incredibly jacked and bearded Hardwon.

“Not the best,” Hardwon shrugged, trying to cut off this conversation before it began. But with no luck.

“Of course of course, why would anyone be here if they were having a good day. Aha aha,” the small man laughed almost hysterically. The tomato juice was slammed down on the table by a well built and muscular woman who dwarfed the man who ordered it. She was clearly trying to decide whether it was worth the energy to be pissed off. “The name’s Denny,” he offered his hand to Hardwon who stared at the hand, back up at Denny and back to his beer again.

“Hardwon,” he grunted, just because he was in a bad mood there was no need to be hostile.

The tense and unwanted conversation was interrupted by the door slamming open and light streaming in through the door. It illuminated a tall figure and a small animal on a leash at her side. “You can’t bring that animal in here,” the bartender growled.

“Oh no he’s a service animal. I have my papers if you need to see them hun,” heavily accented English chirped back as the door shut and Hardwon’s eyes slowly adjusted. His eyes were immediately drawn to the animal, which he was pretty sure was a possum in a little red jacket, and worked his way up through her tattered coca cola flip flops, to far too short fraying jean dungarees which were stained with some unidentifiable substances, then to long red hair tied back in a messy plait. She was pretty despite the rag tag appearance that didn’t seem to cover anything that they should. “Moonshine Cybin, pleasure to meet you,” Moonshine settled down on the other side of Hardwon, also far too close, and offered her hand to the barkeep.

“Hmm right, I’m Mishka. What can I get you?” she shook Moonshine’s hand cautiously.

“Oh do you do cocktails? Can I have a Woo Woo?” she beamed exposing the gap between her front teeth and her startling green eyes twinkled. Mishka rolled her eyes and got to work.

“Hey lads, sorry for interrupting but I’m new in town and looking to meet people,” Moonshine leant over the bar, resting her head on her hands and exposing a lot of cleavage.

“This is Hardwon and I’m Denny,” Denny chirped, reaching over Hardwon to shake Moonshine’s hand with a shaking hand of his own. “And who’s this little guy?” Denny questioned, reaching down to pat the assistance possum but recoiled with a squeak when the rodent bared his teeth.

“This is Paw Paw, he helps,” Moonshine lengthened the possums lead and he began weaving in and out of the stools.

“Everything peachy with you Denny. You seem a little strung up?” Moonshine asked and Hardwon was seriously regretting this.

“I’m in super big trouble. I was supposed to be babysitting this little group of church kids at an event at the Natural History Museum and I totally lost them. I had four, now there’s only one and their parents are going to kill me!” Denny vented to these two strangers.

“Where’s the one?” Hardwon queried, who left this man in charge of their children?

“Oh he’s in the car outside,” Denny waved off the concern.

“Scoutmaster Denny!” Hardwon’s head shot around as a teenager walked into the bar cautiously. Somehow he was even shorter than Denny was and was laden with a backpack almost his size and a brown sash with all sorts of brightly colourly patches.

“Beverly!” Denny’s voice cracked and eyes widened in panic.

“When are we going to pick up the others?” Beverly asked dashing over to Denny and pointedly avoiding touching anything.

“Soon, kid, um soon,” Denny stammered, looking frantically at his two new vague acquaintances.

“You haven’t told him his friends are missing?” Hardwon exclaimed, now he wasn’t the best with kids as all the other kids at the orphanage were little shits but even he knew that this kid needed to know that his friends were missing.

“Missing!” Beverly squeaked. “We need to call the police, and my dad,” he murmured, rummaging in his bag for his phone.

“Woah woah, hold up there scamp,” Denny herded Beverly onto a stool and stopped him searching. “There’s no need to call anyone. They’ll turn up?” there was no confidence in Denny’s reassurances.

“We have to do something,” Beverly was not to be swayed.

Hardwon was an orphan in a whole chain of orphanages and foster homes and halfway houses where it was clear he was different to all the other children in the town. This caused his intense desire to show his skills, he was athletically talented, and a lack of understanding of how most social situations worked outside of his little bubble. Even to him it was clear that whatever this was he had been accosted by, it wasn’t normal. As Denny was trying to talk Beverly into not calling his father, calling this a mission and a rite of passage, Paw Paw weaved his way away from the bar over to a table of, for lack of a more eloquent word, thugs. A yowl of pain and a screech from the possum was all the warning the weird group of four got. The lead thug ripped the leash out of Moonshine’s hand and picked Paw Paw up by his vest. “Hey you can’t do that!” Beverly was the first to his feet despite being half the height of the people he was squaring up to. “He’s Moonshine’s give him back,” Beverly was not backing down. The thug lowered the fidgeting and yowling possum before looming over the small teen.

“And who’s going to make me kid, you?” the thug laughed and all his henchman chortled behind.

“No me,” Hardwon retorted and punched him clear in the nose.

“Thanks for what you did back there,” Beverly beamed as the four of them sat on the curb outside the bar. Beverly was putting a plaster on a cut on Moonshine’s cheek and Hardwon was holding a bag of frozen peas to his fist. Turns out as well as having no life prospects, Hardwon did not know how to throw a punch properly but he did manage to kick the shit out of some over entitled fools.

“Anytime kid, don’t appreciate bullies,” Hardwon shrugged as the teen preened at the attention.

“I have an idea. How about you guys find the kids? It can be a mission to get your investigator badge Bev and these nice new scoutmasters can help,” Denny was frantic with worry as the other teens were still not answering their phones. Hardwon still didn’t know why they weren’t ringing the police but today was weird enough why not make it worse.

“That’s a great idea. If we head back to the museum maybe we can find out where they went from there,” Moonshine was in without a hesitation.

“I’ll pay you. However much you want. £1000?” Denny whispered frantically and that definitely made the decision for him. Morally he needed to rescue these kids, financially he needed the money to not be sleeping on the street.

“Okay, to the museum,” Hardwon sighed as Beverly leapt to his feet to high five Moonshine. He just had to hope that this wouldn’t turn out to be a shockingly bad idea.


End file.
